


What Really Matters

by Fluttercups



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F, Multi, itll probably mostly sfw, its gonna be pretty long, steven probably wont even be in it, theres gonna be some other ships later on
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-05-16 04:24:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5813986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fluttercups/pseuds/Fluttercups
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lapis is an art student at college when the school's star athlete accidentally ruins her supplies and is in debt to her. Pearl goes to the coffee shop every day at the same time to admire the barista, but can never work up the nerve to start a conversation. Peridot is a small geek who loves robotics and has an unrelenting crush on the beautiful girl two years above her that she can't bring herself to confess to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. February Rain

Lapis made her way across the stretch of campus between the college building and the dormitories. One hand was clutched tight around the strap of her thin messenger bag. The brown roots of her hair were starting to show, peeking through the wavy mess of bright blue. She walked with a fast pace but her shoulders were slumped over in exhaustion after a long day of classes and club activities. The grass was slick with rainwater, still pouring from the sky. Rolling gray clouds blotted out the sky, leaving just a few soft rays of light peeking through. Normally, Lapis loved the rain, but she held a wide umbrella over her to protect the supplies in her bag.  


As she stepped over the curb and into the parking lot in front of the dorms, a large red truck came swerving into view, it’s engine sounding inches away from failure. It roared past Lapis, it’s tires tearing through a puddle of muddy water and spraying her with it.  


Lapis jumped back, but not before it hit her. She stood in shock for a moment while the truck pulled into one of the parking spaces. The driver’s door swung open with an awful creak, and a tall junior stepped out. Her long blonde hair was pulled into a messy ponytail and she was wearing a basketball jersey, despite the chilly weather. A couple other people all piled out of her truck, grinning and talking loudly about some game. Lapis recognized the driver as the school’s star sports player, having won some sort of trophy last season and now playing on the basketball team, apparently. Lapis clutched her bag tighter and started toward the crowd of people before they could walk away. They hadn’t even spared her a glance since she saw them get out of the car, either not knowing they sprayed her, or not caring at all.  


“Excuse me!” She shouted, nearing them. As she got close she noticed splotches and stripes of darker skin across the driver’s arms and face. She’d seen her in photographs and newspapers, but her skin was much more striking up close. Seeing it now, she’d almost swear publicity photos had been altered to dial down the sports star’s stripes.  


She shook the thought and called out again. “Hey! Girl with the basketball jersey! Excuse me!”  


The blonde turned slightly, seeing the shorter girl standing hunched over and soaking wet. She looked two inches away from blowing a fuse. The blonde involuntarily let out a laugh. “What happened to you?”  


Lapis’ eyes widened for a moment, and she puffed air out of her nose like an irritated bull. Exasperated, she threw her arms above her head, her umbrella no longer covering her. “What happened to me?! You happened to me! You came speeding into the lot in your beat up little truck in this kind of weather without a thought and ran right into a puddle that I just happened to be walking by, and now I’m soaked, and my bag is soaked!” Lapis was gesturing wildly between the other girl and her precious bag. The taller girl was actually taken aback, but Lapis was not stopping, now moving closer to the other girl and poking at her chest. “I have expensive art supplies in here! Things that are very easily ruined by water! Could you pay a little attention when you’re driving?”  


“I… I’m sorry.” The girl’s apology sounded more shocked than remorseful, but Lapis cooled down a bit. Without realizing, she’d raised herself onto her tiptoes while lecturing the star, but the top of her head hardly reached the girl’s chin. She lowered herself, blushing a little bit.  
The girl’s friends stared at her, dumbfounded.  


“Anyway,” Lapis said, her volume returning to normal, “if any of my things are damaged, you’re paying for them.”  


“Hey, look,” the girl said pointedly, snapping out of her stupor. “I’m sorry your stuff got wet but I can’t pay for it.”  


Lapis puffed out her cheeks and raised a finger, but a friend of the taller girl shut her down.  


“Jas, this is lame, let’s go already.”  


“Jas” took one last look at Lapis and turned heel, leaving Lapis there to steam.  


She stomped up the stairs to her dorm, chewing on her cheek while she walked. Inside, her roommate Pearl was spread out across her bed, a cluster of books and papers around her. Lapis turned to her own bed and threw her bag off, then pulled off her damp sweater and tossed it to the ground. Her side of the room was considerably messier. Clothes hung off the backs of chairs, and book corners peeked out from underneath her bed curtain. She tried to keep it clean for Pearl, but it always ended up getting messy again within a matter of days.  


Pearl noticed her huffing and tossing things after a few moments. She shifted up to sit on the edge of her bed, her papers crinkling softly. “What’s wrong?”  


Lapis was rummaging through her bag. She took a moment before answering her, pulling out a large rolled up paper and flattening it out against her bed. It was a mess of watercolor, all the shapes bleeding into each other and losing their distinction. “The sports star, you know, the big blonde one? She ran through a puddle next to me.” She pulled out another two paintings, the papers were wrinkling slightly. “My bag got soaked.”  


Pearl folded her hands in her lap and tilted her head. “Oh, Lapis...”  


Lapis took a sketchbook from her bag and began to flip through it before setting it on her desk and switching a fan on next to it. It’s pages rustled softly and smelled of rainwater. “My supplies are mostly alright, but my paintings are ruined,” she said, lighting a tealight candle beneath a jasmine wax cube warmer. She pushed her bag and paintings onto the floor, falling back onto her bed. “My sketchbook might be ok.”  


“Um, I was about to go to the coffee shop,” Pearl spoke up, glancing at the clock. It read 5:15. “But if you need to talk, I can stay.”  


Lapis bit her cheek. “No, you go. I’d like to be alone and cool off right now.”  


“Alright.” The room was filling with the smell of flowers, blocking off the February rain. Pearl pulled on a sweater and headband, tucking her peach hair behind her ears. “Is there anything you need?” she asked before going out the door.  


“Mmm… could you bring me back a hot chocolate? Just take the money out of my purse.”  


“Don’t worry about it,” Pearl smiled, “it’s on me.”  


Lapis smiled back at her.


	2. Biology in The Coffee Shop

Chapter 2

Pearl walked two blocks to the same small coffee shop every day at 5:30. Every day, from 5:30 until 9, Rose worked as a barista in that same coffee shop. This wasn’t much of a coincidence. Pearl had had a crush on her ever since her first year at the university. She would go to the coffee shop every few days to get some of her studying done after school. The ambience of ceramic glasses tapping down against wood and the muffled buzz of chatter helped her focus. That was where she first saw Rose, with her soft curls and endearing grin, serving the line of customers ahead of Pearl with remarkable patience.

Pearl opened up an umbrella from her bag and made her way across the street in the stiff, winter chill. She recalled the first day she met Rose and messed up her order, getting a cappuccino instead of a mocha and bitterly sipping the layers of milk so she could have an excuse to stay until she could muster the nerve to talk to the barista. That was nearly a year ago, she thought, and she still hadn’t managed to strike up a conversation with her.  


The city streets were filled with the low murmur of traffic. The raindrops met the pavement with soft crashes beneath the foggy sky. Pearl could smell the subtle scent of the sea in them, washing over the smell of the food joints and small shops around her.  


The door to the coffee shop opened up a warm and inviting world, furnished with dark, wooden tables and plush, red booths. The smell of coffee beans rushed to meet her nose. She spotted Rose behind the counter in her standard mauve uniform. Even in the company’s plain clothing, Pearl thought she looked stunning.  


“Good to see you again,” Rose said, smiling brightly. Pearl blushed. “Half caf mocha?”  


“Yes,” Pearl smiled, pushing her hair back behind her ear again. She never said more than a few words to Rose but the barista was able to recognize her and remember what she always ordered.  


After she got a warm cup with “Purl” scrawled on it, she settled into a booth in the corner of the room. She began unpacking the books and papers from her messenger bag and going over the problems on her advanced studies.  


“Ok now I know you’re fucking with me… No, yeah, I get that there’s space between atoms and shit but the size of an apple?”  


Pearl’s head perked up. There was a girl sitting in the booth behind her, talking very loudly on the phone.  


“Ok but that’s kind of not the point, I need to understand how to do these problems.”  


With a bit of hesitation, Pearl sneaked a glance behind her and peeked over the girl’s shoulder. She was working on problems out of a very basic Biology book… and not doing very well, from what she could see.  


“Um,” she said, then coughed and said it again, louder. “Um, excuse me?” The girl turned to her, a dark face looking up at her through a mane of purple hair. “Um, I could help you with that. Your work, I mean, if you want.”  


The girl blinked at her and Pearl worried she’d intruded into her personal matters. Anxiously, she began rubbing her thumbs. But the girl grinned at her. “Nevermind, I got this,” she said into her phone, and then scooted over, patting the seat beside her.  


Pearl gathered her things and sat down in the other girl’s booth. “I’m Pearl.” She held out her hand.  


“Amethyst,” the other girl slapped her own hand against it instead of shaking it. Pearl jumped, and then laughed nervously.  


“So, um, if I could ask, what was that about the apple earlier?”  


“Hmm?” Amethyst hummed, lifting her drink to her lips. Pearl noticed a crumb at the corner of her mouth and had to remind herself not to wipe it off. “Oh, when I was on the phone? My friend was telling me that if you squished up all the people on Earth, they could be condensed into the size of an apple. I said it was bullshit but she said it has something to do with space between atoms and stuff.”  


“Well actually, it’s more about the space inside the atoms,” Pearl announced. Amethyst looked at her blankly. “Well, you know what an atom looks like, how there’s a bunch of tiny balls in this bigger… orbit thing?”  


“Uh huh.”  


“Well the space these tiny balls in an atom take up is much less that the space where there’s, well, nothing to take up space.”  


“Oh...:” Amethyst took another sip of her drink with wide eyes. “That actually makes sense.”  


“Yes,” Pearl smiled, “and if you got rid of all that space, and, yes, the space between atoms that don’t touch, the entire human race could be condensed to the size of something very small.” Amethyst’s eyes hadn’t glazed over yet; she looked genuinely interested in what Pearl was talking about, so she continued. “But, this condensed ball would retain most of it’s weight, so it’d be extraordinarily heavy.”  


“That is… actually really awesome,” Amethyst stated, a dumbfounded look plastered on her face.  


Pearl realized she had raised herself in her excitement, her bottom hovering slightly over her seat. She settled herself in and cleared her throat, a grin still on her face. “Now,” she said, “let’s see about this homework.”


	3. Lapis in the Cosmos

Lapis was staring up at the ceiling of her dimly lit room. Sometime in the past week, Pearl had come home to see her putting up glowing stars, painstakingly recreating constellation patterns of the sky. Pearl pulled a chair over to stand on and help her, and together they created the Milky Way, bit by bit.  


They laid in their respective beds and listened to the soft hum of Pearl’s music player while the scent of warm orange wax cubes swept through the room. Pearl shifted slightly in her bed to face her roommate.  


“Lapis, I think I might be making a new friend.”  


Lapis turned to face her as well. “Oh?”  


“Yeah. There’s this girl at the coffee shop I’ve been talking to. Not Rose… not yet anyway. I help her with her science, and, well, most other subjects. And she’s fun to talk to.”  


Lapis smiled at her friend, but felt a chilly sting somewhere inside of her. “I’m glad you’re making friends, Pearl.”  


For the longest time, it’d been just Pearl and her. They’d met in the sixth grade, when they were both eating their lunches alone in the bathroom. Neither of them had been particularly good with people, Lapis because she was too confrontational, and Pearl because she’d shy away from most conversations. The two of them didn’t even hit it off so well with each other in the beginning, but they were determined, and kind of scared, of the prospect of spending the rest of the year alone.  


Since then, they were all each other had.  


Pearl looked back up to the glowing patterns on the ceiling again. “She doesn’t get bored when I talk to her about the things I like. She doesn’t even care for science at all, but she says I make it sound fascinating when I explain it.”  


“I never get bored of you, Pearl.”  


“I know that. I just…” she put a finger to her lips and hmmed. “It’s just good to know that there’s more than one person in the world who enjoys my presence.”  


Lapis bit her lip and began to gnaw on it.  


“I’m happy that you’re happy.”  


A thrashing beat and sharp guitar whine cut through the atmosphere. Music was playing loudly in the dorm below theirs, muffled through the floorboards. Pearl turned her soft acoustic song up a bit and waited a moment before turning it off. “Turn yours on Lapis, there’s no way mine could drown out that.”  


Lapis flicked her mp3 on and put a song on before setting it back in it’s dock. They laid and listened to it for a while without speaking a word.

_If I’m bound to forget you,_  
_Don’t you let me be._  
_From the day that I met you, I’ve been set on you._  
_What a tragedy it’d be if you and me weren’t happy._  


“I know you think I’m bad with people,” Pearl said, staring up with a soft smile. “And I am. But… you are too Lapis. I know you think you’re fine because you’re not shy. Neither of us have ever really had anyone else.”  


“I don’t want anyone else.”  


Pearl closed her eyes. “I know.”  


The music from downstairs hushed for a moment before the next song kicked on, louder than before. Pearl scrunched up her face.  


“Ugh, what the hell,” Lapis said, kicking her feet off her bed and standing up. “I’m going to tell them to go shut up.” She took a moment to put on her shoes and jacket and headed out in her pajamas. On the stairs she could hear the lyrics seeping through the walls.

_Could you be the Stargirl,_  
_That can join with me in every verse?_  
_Could you be my harmony?_  
_Could you be Miss Universe?_  


Lapis shook her head and continued. She knocked on the door where the music was coming from, wondering how the people living in the dorms around were putting up with this.  


The door opened and Lapis opened her mouth to talk but stopped, letting it hang open.  


“Oh,” the girl inside said, “it’s you.” It was the tall, blonde girl from the parking lot. She leaned against the door frame. “What do you want.”  


Lapis straightened herself and huffed, “what do you think you’re doing blasting that music so loudly? It’s nearly 1 in the morning.”  


“Sorry. I’ll keep it down.” She looked down at Lapis’ shirt. “What is… what is on your shirt?”  


Lapis looked down at her baggy pajama shirt and immediately turned a bright shade of red. A painting of Frozen’s Elsa in thick, swirly brushstrokes was sandwiched between the words “Let it Gogh”.  


“I-It’s a pun!”  
“Jasper, who’s that?” A singsong voice came out from deeper inside the room, shouting over the music.  


“It’s nobody.” Jasper said back.  


Lapis leaned in a bit and saw chubby pink-painted toes and a ring of curls from behind the door, but Jasper glared down at her until she backed off. Lapis cleared her throat and crossed her arms. “By the way, you ruined my sketchbook and a few of my paintings. So, I want a new sketchbook, a good one, and th-thirty dollars in damages,” she said, coming up with the number on the spot. “I live in the dorm right above you, 209.”  


Jasper sighed and rolled her eyes. “Fine, is that all?”  


“Yes,” Lapis said, turning to leave. “And don’t forget to turn that music down.”  


“Alright,” Jasper shouted and shut the door.


End file.
